Celebrating Desmond Heeley
A Tobin Center Art Initiative and McNay Art Museum Collaboration
September 24 -> October 7, 2018
A celebrated designer whose sets and costumes activated stages at the Met, the Stratford Festival, and the Houston Ballet, Desmond Heeley was a master of innovation with an eye for beauty and grandeur. Throughout his long, successful career, Heeley was skilled in using found objects and mundane materials to create opulent costumes and sets. His creations were meticulously designed with the audience’s perspective in mind; lush, painterly sets and sculptural costumes dazzled from afar and impressed up-close. At the Tobin Center for Performing Arts, audiences can enjoy the spectrum of Heeley’s artistic process: four of his designs for La Traviata, originally commissioned by the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1993, are on view, illustrating the transformation of design components to fleshed-out costumes. The final products, the sets, and costumes for OPERA San Antonio’s production of La Traviata fully indicate Heeley’s mastery of design for the stage.
Heeley was born in London in 1931 and grew up near Stratford-upon-Avon, fittingly the birthplace of Shakespeare. Enthralled by moving props in theater productions as a child, Heeley developed an early interest in design. While working with the Shakespeare Memorial Theater (now the Royal Shakespeare Company), he developed an aptitude for quickly improvising props, sculptures, and costumes. Heeley developed working relationships with designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch and director Tyrone Guthrie, with whom he would later collaborate at the Stratford Festival in Ontario and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, respectively.
Heeley was instrumental in organizing the Stratford Festival, designing for nearly 40 productions beginning in 1957 with Hamlet, starring Christopher Plummer, and concluding with The Importance of Being Earnest in 2009. Although not as detailed as some of his later work, Heeley’s design for Hamlet’s eponymous protagonist features fabric swatches and insightful, at times humorous notes that would become hallmarks in his work. “Should look messy.” reads another note in a 1965 Stratford design for William Hutt as Justice Shallow in Henry IV. Bits of metallic thread and plastic doily remnants are placeholders for metallic details in the dress of a Duchess’ Lady in The Duchess of Malfi.
Heeley's speed and improvisation could design and fabricate designs that were never associated with carelessness or a lack of attention to detail. A costume design for Roxanne in the Guthrie Theater’s 1971 production of Cyrano de Bergerac features fabric swatches whose colors are nearly indistinguishable from the hues Heeley used in the rendering itself. Another Guthrie design for a 1972 production of Oedipus presents Jocasta clothed in an assortment of intricate, discernible patterns, fabrics, and embellishments but is composed in a completely monochrome palette of graphite and gouache.
Heeley won three Tony Awards, two in 1968 for costumes and sets for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard’s absurdist spin on Hamlet. This was the first time someone won both design awards for the same production. Heeley’s talents were notably exhibited in 1987 in one of his signature productions: The Nutcracker. Produced by the Houston Ballet, Heeley’s storybook scenery and striking costumes masterfully captured the magic of Tchaikovsky’s holiday ballet. Brandishing a sword and donning a helmet, one mouse rides another into battle with the toy soldiers in one of Heeley’s whimsical designs for the production. In opposition to the mice, the Nutcracker brandishes his own sword in a grand military costume.
Robert L.B. Tobin was an important theatre patron and a visionary theatre collector who appreciated the artistic and documentary importance of scene and costume designs. His collection, which includes preliminary sketches, presentation drawings, and maquettes, comprises the core of the Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts at the McNay Art Museum.
Heeley maintained a relationship with the arts in Texas and delivered a Distinguished Lecture at the McNay in 2002. He had a great appreciation for Robert L. B. Tobin, recalling fondly his “fascination [with] how things were made and the journey from the drawing to how [the design] was realized.” It was no surprise then that Heeley received the Robert L.B. Tobin Award in 2013, presented by the Theatre Development Fund. Mel Weingart, President of The Tobin Theatre Arts Fund, is intent on honoring Robert Tobin’s friendship with Desmond Heeley and his enthusiasm for his designs, remarking that “The Tobin Theatre Arts Fund is very pleased to be collaborating with OPERA San Antonio, the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, and the McNay Art Museum in this exhibition.”
It is the Tobin Center’s honor to carry on the spirit of Desmond Heeley’s innovation for old and new audiences by partnering with the McNay and OPERA San Antonio to showcase these designs.
